Dear brothers and sisters throughout the world

southernbubby

Thu, May 09 2019, 4:27 pm

WastingTime wrote:

Yes I wrote above.
I heard that reaction too. It's terrible, as if this is survival of the fittest here. And who cares abt the weaker ones among us.

The child in question got no health care when he was stricken with measles. His parents were both sick with measles and their ideology was not to use the services of the Israeli government. Possibly medical care could have saved the child. All children are valuable and worth saving.

The child may not be the best example of why we need to vaccinate, unless we use the tragedy to point out that real medical intervention is needed if children who are already weak catch measles.

The reason that we need to vaccinate is that if many people have the disease at the same time, hospitals may not be able to adequately care for all of the sick people. Are anti-vaxers really expecting homeopathy, herbs, and vitamins to handle all of the serious repercussions of the measles or do they figure that real medicine will rescue them if alternative medicine fails?

Real medicine and vaccines are the reasons that the US death rates for measles are low. Hospitals have saved many measles patients from death since the outbreak started. This is the only thing that they might not be able to refute.
If they honestly feel that alternative medicine would have saved that baby, they are too far gone to discuss the issue rationally.

JoyInTheMorning

Thu, May 09 2019, 5:33 pm

southernbubby wrote:

southernbubby, while you're correct that if many were to contract measles, the strain on our health system might mean that some/many couldn't get the medical care they need, I don't think that's the only problem. The statistics even for Western countries with well-developed, adequately large medical systems are still quite awful. Five percent of all children who get measles go on to develop pneumonia. 1/1000 get encephalitis, and many of those are permanently damaged . 1/1000 die. (The deaths and encephalitis sufferers probably intersect, but it's not exactly the same sets of people.) Among unvaccinated babies who get the measles, around 1/600 will go on to develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a fatal degenerative disease, by the time they are young adults. There are other complications, even in the Western world, such as deafness, sterility, and vision loss. The numbers may not seem high now, but if measles becomes common, then the numbers become high. Back when measles was common, five hundred people died each year in the U.S. That's not a small number. For example, it's a lot more kids than are killed in school shootings each year, and we (rightly) consider that to be a grave problem. We want all our children to grow up to be healthy adults.

The issue of real medical care vs. homeopathy, herbs, and vitamins is worth further discussion. I've read several amothers here say that they give Vitamin A to their kids when they get the measles and all is fine. But Vitamin A is far from a cure-all. It is true that the consequences of measles are far more serious among malnourished children, particularly those who have Vitamin A deficiencies. It is also true that studies show that among children less than two years old who receive two doses of 200,000 units of Vitamin A, mortality is reduced. (One dose does not appear to reduce mortality; nor is the protective effect seen in children older than two.) But that does not mean that when you give Vitamin A to children who are not Vitamin A deficient, it helps. (I cannot refrain from pointing out the irony of parents who won't let the MMR be given to their children, but are fine with megadoses of Vitamin A to their non-Vitamin-A deficient children. It's ironic because megadoses of Vitamin A can be toxic.)

I've also read of people who give herbs or homeopathy. Again, the irony abounds. Herbs have not generally been tested for safety, and can be toxic, and in fact cause death; moreover, different brands sometimes do and sometimes don't contain the amounts claimed on the label. Don't get me started on homeopathy; there is no evidence that any of that works, unless there's enough of a concentration of the active ingredient for it to be considered an herb rather than something that retains the "energy" of a substance that's been diluted beyond detection.

southernbubby

Thu, May 09 2019, 7:02 pm

JoyInTheMorning wrote:

This is all true but where would those non vaccinated children who were treated for measles in hospitals be now if they would have not sought treatment? They would have probably died. Because we don't have a body count, it's easy to say that the disease isn't fatal.

So why do we vaccinate if we can prevent death and maybe even prevent disability with medical treatment? Probably because we shouldn't rely on it or needlessly overburden it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Last year a flu epidemic overburdened many hospitals. If enough people gave up vaccines, imagine how many cases of measles we would have! It would be like living in Madagascar!

I just saw in my news feed that a contagious person was in the same place that I was. Luckily I am now fully vaccinated. I sure hope it works.